Moderm semiconductor processing technology has advanced rapidly with increased transistor density, reduced chip area and improved transistor performance. In many cases, these advancements have come at the expense of increased leakage power. In the past, this leakage power has been small in comparison to the total chip power; however, with advancing technologies, leakage power is becoming an increasingly larger percentage. Part of the reason for this increase in leakage power is that many newer technologies rely more on higher-leakage semiconductor devices, which may have shorter channel lengths, thinner gate-oxide layers and/or lower threshold voltages than semiconductor devices of more conventional processing technologies.
This increasing leakage power is especially a concern for systems and devices that rely heavily on batteries. Such systems and devices may utilize a standby mode to reduce their power consumption. During standby mode, many active components are powered down; however, some active components require power to retain the current state for the processing elements. During standby mode, the active components used to retain state information may continue to draw at least a leakage current. As a result, an increase in power consumption due to this increase in leakage current may result during standby. Thus, there are needs for systems and methods for retaining data and state information with reduced leakage.